Religious Vitality in Victorian London

Religious Vitality in Victorian London
Author: W. M. Jacob
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2021-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192651749

This innovative book challenges many of the widely held assumptions about the place of religion in Victorian society and in London, the world's first great industrial and commercial metropolis. Against the background of Victorian London it explores the religiosity of Londoners as expressed through the dynamic renewal of traditional faith communities, including Judaism and the historic churches, as well as fresh expressions of religion, including the Salvation Army, Mormons, spiritualism, and the occult. It shows how laypeople, especially the rich and women were mobilised in the service of their faith, and their fellow citizens. Drawing on research in social, economic, oral, cultural, and women's history Jacob argues that religious motivations lay behind concerns that subsequently preoccupied people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These include the changing place of women in society, an active concern for social justice, the sexual exploitation of women and children, and provision of education for all classes and all ages. By examining religion broadly, in its social and cultural context and looking beyond conventional approaches to religious history, Religious Vitality in Victorian London illustrates the dynamic significance of religion in society influencing even the expression of secularism.

Religion in Victorian London

Religion in Victorian London
Author: William M. Jacob
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2021-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192897403

This innovative book challenges many of the widely held assumptions about the place of religion in Victorian society and in London, the world's first great industrial and commercial metropolis. Against the background of Victorian London it explores the religiosity of Londoners as expressed through the dynamic renewal of traditional faith communities, including Judaism and the historic churches, as well as fresh expressions of religion, including the Salvation Army, Mormons, spiritualism, and the occult. It shows how laypeople, especially the rich and women were mobilised in the service of their faith, and their fellow citizens. Drawing on research in social, economic, oral, cultural, and women's history Jacob argues that religious motivations lay behind concerns that subsequently preoccupied people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These include the changing place of women in society, an active concern for social justice, the sexual exploitation of women and children, and provision of education for all classes and all ages. By examining religion broadly, in its social and cultural context and looking beyond conventional approaches to religious history, Religious Vitality in Victorian London illustrates the dynamic significance of religion in society influencing even the expression of secularism.

Ebenezer Howard

Ebenezer Howard
Author: Frances Knight
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2023-06-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0198790813

Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928) is famous worldwide for founding the Garden City movement, and he continues to be frequently cited by planners and theorists. When he was dying, he urged his prospective biographer to remember that 'the spiritual dimension' had always been central to his life and work. He wanted this to be prominently brought out in any biography. Almost a century after his death, Ebenezer Howard: Inventor of the Garden City is the first book that does justice to that wish. Frances Knight has written a very readable biography, the first since the 1980s, with a properly contextualized analysis of Howard's religious views. Shaped in the world of London Congregationalism, he became a keen seeker after unity and peace. He grafted new religious ideas, particularly from spiritualism, and later from Theosophy, into his biblically-informed, Protestant faith. Prone to spiritual epiphanies, he believed that he had been raised up to preach the 'gospel of the garden city' and to tackle the housing crisis by beginning to build the New Jerusalem in the Hertfordshire countryside. Although he sometimes appeared naïve, he was astute, and highly skilled at combining different, and sometimes conflicting, ideas in a way that built consensus and gained support from people across the social and political spectrum. As well as explaining the remarkable sequence of events that led from the publication of his ideas to the foundation of Letchworth as the world's first garden city, just five years later, this book investigates other neglected aspects of Howard's life including: the years he spent in America, his career as a shorthand writer, and his relationship with his first wife Lizzie - herself an important garden city pioneer. Howard wanted his garden cities to be places of spiritual exploration, and as this book shows, early Letchworth certainly lived up to those expectations.

Reinventing Christianity

Reinventing Christianity
Author: Linda Woodhead
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2019-07-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351775928

This title was first published in 2001. 'An age of faith or an age of doubt?'- the question has dominated study of Christianity in the Victorian era. Reinventing Christianity offers a fresh analysis of the vitality and variety of Christianity in Britain and America in the Victorian era. Part One presents an overview of some of the main varieties of Christianity in the west ranging from the conservative - Protestant evangelicalism and 'fortress' Catholicism - to the radical - Theosophy, Swedenborgianism and Transcendentalism; Part Two reviews negotiations between Christianity and the wider culture. The conclusion reflects on general trends in the period, showing how many of these prefigured later developments in religion. This book highlights the creativity and diversity of 19th century Christianity, showing how developments normally associated with the late 20th century - such as the reassertion of tradition and the rise of feminist theology and alternative spirituality - were already in train a century before.

Victorian England: Aspects of English and Imperial History, 1837-1901

Victorian England: Aspects of English and Imperial History, 1837-1901
Author: Lewis Charles Bernard Seaman
Publisher: Methuen Publishing
Total Pages: 508
Release: 1973
Genre: History
ISBN:

“This is a clear and thought-provoking examination of the years from Queen Victoria's accession to the close of the nineteenth century, devoting rather more space than is usual to the last two decades of the reign. With much liveliness of mind, Mr Seaman considers many of the social, political and Imperial issues of the period. He begins with a balanced appraisal of the significance and persistence of Victorian religion, and goes on to consider the economic and social problems of the early and late periods in a manner which, it is hoped, will help those who are not social scientists to understand the importance of the 'Age of Steam' as well as of the public health and other social legislation of the reign, and to acquire a clearer understanding of what is called 'The Great Depression'. He provides a realistic presentation of the personalities and policies of the Queen's most celebrated ministers, and, inevitably, of the Queen herself, and closely scrutinizes the ideas and events associated with Victorian Imperialism, attempting in his analysis to correct several misconceptions. Sixth-form students and first-year undergraduates should find Victorian England readable, informative and, on occasion, challenging, and those who have an interest in this fascinating but often misunderstood period will find much to enjoy.”-Publisher.

God and Progress

God and Progress
Author: Joshua Bennett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2019-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192574760

Exploring the rich relationship between historical thought and religious debate in Victorian culture, God and Progress offers a unique and authoritative account of intellectual change in nineteenth-century Britain. The volume recovers a twofold process in which the growth of progressive ideas of history transformed British Protestant traditions, as religious debate, in turn, profoundly shaped Victorian ideas of history. It adopts a remarkably wide contextual perspective, embracing believers and unbelievers, Anglicans and nonconformists, and writers from different parts of the British Isles, fully situating British debates in relation to their European and especially German Idealist surroundings. The Victorian intellectual mainstream came to terms with religious diversity, changing ethical sensibilities, and new kinds of knowledge by encouraging providential, spiritualized, and developmental understandings of human time. A secular counter-culture simultaneously disturbed this complex consensus, grounding progress in appeals to scientific advances and the retreat of metaphysics. God and Progress thus explores the ways in which divisions within British liberalism were fundamentally related to differences over the past, present, and future of religion. It also demonstrates that religious debate powered the process by which historicism acquired cultural authority in Victorian national life, and later began to lose it. The study reconstructs the ways in which theological dynamics, often relegated to the margins of nineteenth-century British intellectual history, effectively forged its leading patterns.

ThirdWay

ThirdWay
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 28
Release:
Genre:
ISBN:

Monthly current affairs magazine from a Christian perspective with a focus on politics, society, economics and culture.

The Death of Christian Britain

The Death of Christian Britain
Author: Callum G. Brown
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135115532

The Death of Christian Britain uses the latest techniques to offer new formulations of religion and secularisation and explores what it has meant to be 'religious' and 'irreligious' during the last 200 years. By listening to people's voices rather than purely counting heads, it offers a fresh history of de-christianisation, and predicts that the British experience since the 1960s is emblematic of the destiny of the whole of western Christianity. Challenging the generally held view that secularization has been a long and gradual process beginning with the industrial revolution, it proposes that it has been a catastrophic short term phenomenon starting with the 1960's. Is Christianity in Britain nearing extinction? Is the decline in Britain emblematic of the fate of western Christianity? Topical and controversial, The Death of Christian Britain is a bold and original work that will bring some uncomfortable truths to light.

Unlocking the Church

Unlocking the Church
Author: William Hadden Whyte
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2017
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0198796153

Unlocking the Church is the story of a revolution. The Victorians transformed how churches were understood, experienced, and built. Initially controversial, this revolution was so successful that it has now been forgotten. Yet it still shapes our experience of church buildings and also helps make sense of what we should do with them now.